Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Employers in the United States in May cut their payrolls by 345,000 — a much smaller drop than the 520,000 reduction expected by economists — but that was the smallest job loss since September.

While the pace of layoffs in the U.S. may be showing signs of easing, the unemployment rate in the U.S. rose by 0.5 percentage points last month to 9.4 per cent — the highest rate since July 1983. Economists had been forecasting a May unemployment rate of 9.2 per cent.

The U.S. Labour Department said about 14.5 million people were unemployed in May. Roughly six million jobs have now been lost in the U.S. since the recession took hold in December 2007.

In addition to smaller-than-expected job losses for May, the Labour Department also revised March and April figures to show smaller declines of 652,000 and 504,000, respectively,